New York Magazine

The Top Ten Graphic Novels

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1. Disappearance Diary by Hideo Azuma (Fanfare/Ponent Mon)
In 1989, veteran manga artist Azuma left his family and work behind to live as a hermit in the mountains of Japan. In a year fraught with financial tension, Azuma’s memoir of homelessness and menial laboródrawn in a deceptively light cartoon style, and packed with desperate sadnessóis a timely reminder of how quickly lives can change. You may read it as a cautionary tale but at least you’ll learn how to make a meal out of a radish and tempura oil.

2. Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw (Fantagraphics)
The rare 720-page doorstop you can actually read in one sitting, 25-year-old
Shaw's dysfunctional-family epic is so funny and engrossing we'd expect Oprah to pick it, but for all the graphic frog sex.

3. Nat Turner, by Kyle Baker (Abrams)
Carefully researched and vividly drawn, Baker’s graphic adaptation of rebel slave Turner's 1831 confession is a bloody but crucial work of history.

4. Slow Storm, by Danica Novgorodoff (First Second)
A female firefighter and an illegal immigrant have a fateful meeting on one tornado-filled night in Kentucky in this thoughtful, ominous debut.

5. Strange Embrace by David Hine (Image)
Psychological horror that would scare the hell out of Edgar Allan Poe.